


"all that I know is I'm breathing"

by talkwordytome



Series: CAOS pre-canon kid!fics & family!fics [6]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Sickfic, Sister-Sister Relationship, Zelda Spellman Needs A Hug, but only kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24063829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: “Hilda imagined that all of these things—these varied small extensions of herself—existed together within a bubbling pot. She imagined that she could lean over and inhale the steam that curled up from the water and that it might fill her up; she imagined that she could be sustained by it and it alone. She imagined what it could be like, to be so free of the worries and griefs that surrounded them of late.”or, in which I’d planned to write a fluffy & sappy sickfic one-shot because I was feeling self-indulgent, but then I read the first chapter of EarthboundCosmonaut’s fic “Costing not less than everything” & ended up wanting more to explore Sabrina’s babyhood & sister relationships & grief instead.(but still with a splash of sickfic, because Zelda Spellman would never wish for me to deny myself my wants.)
Relationships: Hilda Spellman & Sabrina Spellman, Hilda Spellman & Zelda Spellman, Sabrina Spellman & Zelda Spellman
Series: CAOS pre-canon kid!fics & family!fics [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676038
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	"all that I know is I'm breathing"

**Author's Note:**

> FIRST OFF: thank you (as usual) to my wonderful cjscullyjanewaygay for being a beta, AND thank you to EarthboundCosmonaut for beta'ing as well! Y'all are both stars & I appreciate all your work so much.
> 
> Title comes from the song "Keep Breathing" by Ingrid Michaelson.
> 
> Timeline-wise, I always assumed Sabrina was ~6 months when Zelda and Hilda took her in, which would make her a few months from turning two in this fic. Depending on how old you think she was when Edward and Diana died, she could be anywhere between 18 months and slightly over two years.

**May 2004**

The house was quiet and still when Hilda returned from her weekly trip to the market. Pale early summer sunlight streamed in through the foyer windows. Detritus from Sabrina’s playtime—stuffed animals and dolls, books and dress up clothes, a tea set and plastic scones and fruits—were scattered across the floor, and Hilda sighed as she stepped over them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d come back to a house that was half as clean as she’d left it.

“Hello?” she called, setting down her shopping bags on the kitchen floor. “Is anyone else here?” But the only answering sound was the familiar thumping bass from Ambrose’s attic bedroom. Had he eaten yet today? She would need to check.

Hilda pondered where Zelda and Sabrina might’ve gotten to as she put away the groceries. Zelda didn’t often take Sabrina out; Zelda didn’t often go out, end stop. Tasks that involved interacting with other humans—particularly mortals—were left to Hilda, which, while occasionally inconvenient, was for the best. Zelda wasn’t a social creature on a good day, and during the past fifteen months good days had been few and far between.

The one year anniversary of Edward’s death had passed not quite three months ago. Hilda sometimes felt as though she was grieving two people: her brother, and the version of Zelda she once knew so well. The old Zelda—the willful, outspoken, defiantly ambitious Zelda—had vanished just as Edward’s plane had vanished. She was wan and withdrawn; she seemed disinterested in even her most fascinating research and refused visitors; ate only when Hilda insisted, and practically lived in her pyjamas and silk kimono. The only person who could coax a smile from Zelda was Sabrina. Zelda had closed and locked the door on any reality that was not the sweet, powdery world in which their niece existed. Hilda loved Sabrina immensely, and knew that Sabrina—in her own funny baby way—loved her back, but Sabrina and Zelda were a universe unto themselves.

As it turned out, the pair had not gone anywhere; Hilda found them sound asleep on the parlor chaise. Sabrina was curled on Zelda’s chest, her tiny form rising and falling with each of Zelda’s breaths, and the tableaux was so enchanting that Hilda wished she had a camera to capture it. Even in sleep, Zelda protectively cupped the back of Sabrina’s head. Sabrina had a lock of Zelda’s red hair clutched in her fist, and she worried it between her fingers like she did with the satin edges of her favorite blanket.

Hilda crept over and carefully maneuvered Sabrina from Zelda’s arms. It was getting towards early evening, and bedtime would be an absolute nightmare if Sabrina napped much longer, or if her sister did, come to think of it.

Drowsy brown eyes blinked open and focused on Hilda. “Lida?” Sabrina murmured.

Hilda smiled at the nickname, a moniker Sabrina had given her by accident when she’d first started talking, and kissed the fragrant crown of her head. “Yes, sweetheart,” she said. “Do you want to come help me make dinner?”

Sabrina nodded and yawned. “Help!” she said, eager as ever to assist her aunties with almost anything, and then peeked over Hilda’s shoulder at Zelda, who was still dead to the world on the chaise. “Aunie Zee sleep.”

“We’ll have to wake her in a bit, but not just now,” Hilda said, settling Sabrina into her kitchen playpen.

“Tired?”

“Yes, she is,” Hilda said, “but won’t it be such a lovely surprise for Aunt Zee when she wakes up and we’ve made her favorite meal?”

Sabrina nodded absently, attention already absorbed by her _Pat the Bunny_ board book. “Cookie, Lida, please?” she asked as she turned a page. She couldn’t really read yet of course, but she liked to pretend.

“Not before dinner, love,” Hilda said. “You know the rules.”

“Please please?” Sabrina said, affecting her best approximation of a pathetic pout.

She looked entirely too much like Zelda with that face on, plus the magnitudes of unreasonable cuteness afforded any Spellman child. Hilda sighed. She and her sister would really have to get better about telling the girl _no_ , Hilda mused, or there was no telling what a hellion she’d be when she eventually became a teenager. But that was a worry for another day, and she supposed one biscuit couldn’t hurt.

She surreptitiously plucked an oat biscuit from the jar and handed it to Sabrina. “No telling your Auntie Zee,” Hilda said with mock sternness. “It’s our secret.” She put her index finger on her lips in a _shush_ gesture.

Sabrina giggled, clumsily mimicking with her chubby fingers. “I no tell,” she promised, spilling crumbs down the front of her pink overalls as she ate.

Hilda chopped and diced and stirred with precision. The kitchen filled with a comforting, familiar collection of smells: chicken and pepper, butter and salt, onions and carrots. She felt the tension of the day, the week, the month, the entire past year begin to slowly melt away. She hummed as she worked, a song from long-ago childhood the name of which she couldn’t quite remember; something that maybe Zelda once sang to her when Hilda was still in her bassinet. Sabrina sat contentedly in her playpen, softly babbling to herself as she made a small tower out of blocks. Hilda imagined that all of these things—these varied small extensions of herself—existed together within a bubbling pot. She imagined that she could lean over and inhale the steam that curled up from the water and that it might fill her up; she imagined that she could be sustained by it and it alone. She imagined what it could be like, to be so free of the worries and griefs that surrounded them of late.

The soft slap of bare feet on hardwood heralded the arrival of another Spellman. “Why didn’t you wake me?” Zelda stood in the threshold, rubbing groggily at her eyes with the heel of her left hand.

Hilda was pleased to see that Zelda had gotten properly dressed that morning. She was wearing a pair of plaid wide-legged trousers and a grey turtleneck—certainly a casual ensemble by Zelda’s standards, but at this point Hilda would accept anything that wasn’t pyjamas badly in need of laundering. Her hair was brushed and neat, if not curled, and she’d even put on a hint of lipstick.

“Zee!” Sabrina crowed, immediately reaching to be held. “Up!”

A genuine smile brightened Zelda’s pale face. She hefted the toddler up into her arms and kissed her soft cheek. “Hello, darling girl,” she said. “Are you being very good for your Auntie Hilda?”

Sabrina nodded as she played with strands of Zelda’s hair. “I help,” she said. “I big girl.”

“Yes, you are,” Zelda agreed, laughing softly. Then she turned into her shoulder to cough.

“You feeling alright, Zelds?” Hilda asked, glancing at her sister. “You look a bit peaky. There’s honey in the pantry and lemon juice in the fridge. Mix those up with a tumbler of hot whisky and you’ll be right as rain in no time at all.”

Zelda waved her off. “I’m fine, Hilda,” she said. “My throat is dry from sleeping. I need a glass of water. That’s all.”

She tried to set Sabrina back in her playpen, but the child resisted, clinging to Zelda’s neck. “No no no,” she said, shaking her head. “No down.”

Zelda rolled her eyes and adjusted Sabrina so the bulk of her weight rested on her left hip. Sabrina curled her legs around Zelda’s middle and lay her head on Zelda’s arm, sighing happily as she sucked her thumb. Hilda bent down over her baking dish to hide the smile that was spreading across her face.

“Something funny, sister?” Zelda asked as she retrieved a glass from the cabinet.

“She has you wrapped ‘round her precious little finger, doesn’t she?” Hilda teased.

“Not in the least,” Zelda said dryly.

As if to test this particular theory, Sabrina picked her head up. “Cookie, Zee?” she asked from around her thumb.

Hilda offered Sabrina a scandalized look. “You already had your biscuit, miss!” she said, then gave Sabrina’s nose a gently admonishing tap. “Sneaky, cheeky little thing.”

“Please cookie?” Sabrina said to Zelda, patting Zelda’s cheek with her free hand.

Zelda gave Hilda a hopeless sort of look and Hilda rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine,” Hilda said, “spoil her dinner.”

Sabrina cheerfully accepted her second oatmeal cookie and, after taking one bite, waved it under Zelda’s nose. “Zee have,” she said.

Zelda eyed the crumbling, slightly damp cookie with disdain. “Thank you, Sabrina, that’s very kind,” she said, “but I think I shall leave that particular cookie to you.”

Sabrina scowled when her benevolent offer went unaccepted. “I _share_ ,” she insisted. “Zee _have_.”

Hilda nudged Zelda with her elbow. “She learns best by example, you know,” she whispered.

Zelda huffed, but nonetheless took the cookie between two delicately pinched fingers. She examined it suspiciously as Sabrina beamed. “Eat!” she commanded.

“You heard her,” Hilda said, corners of her mouth twitching. “Zee eat.”

Zee finished what was left of the oatmeal cookie in three bites, doing her best to swallow quickly the parts made mushy by toddler saliva. Apparently satisfied, Sabrina tucked her head back down and resumed her thumb sucking.

Zelda sat down in a kitchen chair, and Sabrina promptly nestled in her lap. Her fingers twitched, and Hilda knew it was because she was desperate for a cigarette. They’d agreed, though, that she couldn’t smoke in the house while Sabrina was still so young; they had no way of knowing how it would affect her half-mortal lungs.

“Zelds?”

“Hmm?” Zelda said, blinking, as if coming out of a trance. “What?”

“I said, did you two have a good day?” Hilda asked. “While I was out doing errands?”

Zelda ran a hand through her hair. “Oh, it was fine,” she said. “We did a puzzle and read a few books, and Sabrina colored a picture.”

“Did you get a chance to work on your research at all?” Hilda asked, a bit tentatively. Zelda’s loss of interest in the activities she’d once enjoyed was a sore spot. “I know you had that project, the translation, that you were working on before…”

Zelda’s posture tensed. “I was busy caring for Sabrina,” she said stiffly. “She required most of my attention, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Well, yes,” Hilda said, doggedly persisting with the familiar argument even as she sensed something in the air begin to shift, “but she’s not… not _so_ terribly little anymore, Zelds. Surely you could put her down for a nap and have some time to yourself if you liked? To read, or write, or anything else you fancy; maybe even start thinking about teaching again? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“I do not recall asking you to micromanage my schedule, Hilda,” Zelda snapped. She rose quickly from her chair, Sabrina still in her arms, and walked to the kitchen door. “I will spend my days as I see fit, sister. I am not a child.”

Hilda swallowed against the rising column of hot, insistent tears in her throat. She didn’t mind being the steady one, the dependable one, the capable one, she really didn’t; being needed was a balm to her. She’d always found satisfaction in watching those she loved eat a meal she’d prepared or wear clothes she’d mended. This, though, felt different. She was mired in grief: not just her own, but the heady closeness of Zelda’s too. There was an ever-present ache lodged behind her ribcage, and what she wanted more than perhaps anything else was for someone to take her hands and say _I’ll take care of this for you; you can rest now_.

Hilda put the chicken pie in the oven and set the timer. She had a good cry as she wiped down the counters and swept the kitchen floor. She imagined tiny pinpricks appearing up and down her body, allowing all the negative energy stored inside her to be burned and released into the air—angry whorls of black and grey and red, like smoke after a fire—as a farmer scorching the land to render it fertile again.

She took her time washing her face and patting it dry. It wouldn’t help either of them if Zelda could tell she’d been crying. She found Zelda and Sabrina in Sabrina’s bedroom, sitting in the rocking chair that Hilda had purchased at an antique mall the first time she’d left the house after Edward. She had reupholstered it in cozy red corduroy, and when not in use it overflowed with Sabrina’s herd of stuffed animals. There Zelda sat, reading aloud from a picture book as Sabrina listened with a rapt attention uncommon in toddlers.

“‘Little Sal’s mother turned around and gasped’,” at the word _gasped_ Zelda gasped herself and made an exaggerated surprised face at Sabrina, “‘My goodness, you are not Little Sal! Where, oh where, is my child?’” She tucked a lock of fine blonde hair behind Sabrina’s ear. “What animal is that?” she asked, pointing to the illustration.

“Bear,” Sabrina said promptly.

“That’s my smart girl,” Zelda said. “Can you turn the page for me?”

“I turn,” Sabrina said, grasping the page with sticky, chubby fingers.

Zelda was glowing, as she always did when she spent time alone with Sabrina, but to Hilda’s discerning eye she looked brittle. Hilda began to suspect that her earlier comment was more accurate than she’d initially assumed; perhaps Zelda _was_ coming down with something. Her eyes were glassy and her throat bobbed with swallows every few seconds, as though it was sore.

“Zelds?” Hilda said, knocking softly on the open door. “Dinner should be ready in the next twenty minutes. Shall we wash up?”

Zelda nodded, but as she closed the book Sabrina began to whine. “More book,” she pleaded, tears that signaled an oncoming tantrum filling her eyes.

Hilda was about to step in—Zelda had just stifled a near-silent sneeze in her wrist, which was all the confirmation Hilda needed to know that her sister was in fact getting a cold—but Zelda didn’t require the help. “We’ll finish it at bedtime, my love,” she said, and tickled Sabrina until she began to giggle, tantrum all but forgotten.

* * *

“You made chicken pie,” Zelda said once they were back in the kitchen. Zelda’s neck flushed pink, embarrassed and shy at having been read so transparently.

“Your favorite,” Hilda said with a wink.

“It looks delicious,” Zelda said as she settled Sabrina in her highchair. “Thank you, Hildy.” She flicked her eyes towards the ceiling. “Hilda, earlier, when I… I snapped, I didn’t mean—that is, it wasn’t my intention, and—”

“Zelds,” Hilda said, “consider it forgiven and forgotten.”

Hilda and Zelda enjoyed dinner in a companionable silence. It was the first meal in months during which Zelda had eaten all her food instead of pushing it half-heartedly around her plate, Hilda noted with satisfaction. Sabrina chattered enough for all three of them as she smeared brown rice, cooked carrots, and small pieces of chicken all over her highchair tray. Some of her dinner ended up on the floor as well, a habit Sabrina had developed recently; Hilda assumed she was curious as to whether someone would clean it up or not.

Ambrose even made a brief appearance, ostensibly to obtain snacks he could ferret away to his bedroom, but he also indulged Sabrina in a game of peek-a-boo before he vanished again. Hilda worried about Ambrose nearly as much as she worried about Zelda, which was saying something. He’d always had a deep well of melancholy, their Ambrose, and Edward had been the only father figure the poor boy had known in decades. Being locked away wasn’t good for him; he had too much vivacity, too tender a heart.

“Why don’t you join us, darling?” Hilda asked hopefully. “We haven’t all sat down for dinner together in _ages_. Sabrina is going to forget what her cousin Ambrose looks like if you’re not careful.”

Ambrose gave Hilda a bittersweet smile that had decidedly more bitter notes in it than sweet. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, Auntie,” he said. “I assure you, I’m not going anywhere.”

Bathtime followed dinner, and bedtime followed bathtime: this was their routine, the orbit their lives followed. Hilda felt dread begin to curdle in her stomach as their day plodded steadily towards its inevitably unstructured penultimate phase. That was when Ambrose’s music thumped impossibly louder, when Zelda’s one glass of bourbon turned into three and then five and then seven, when Zelda said she was going out for a cigarette and didn’t return for hours and hours. When Hilda paced and puttered and straightened and tried to keep from making herself sick with worry.

Though on this particular evening it appeared that there was no call for Hilda’s usual concern. Zelda was curled up on the chaise under a colorful wool afghan Hilda had knitted during the ‘60s. She had a fire going in the hearth even though it was relatively balmy outside, and she was watching a black and white movie without appearing to really see it. She coughed again. It wasn’t the dry cough of earlier but rattling and congested, and she winced when at last the fit passed.

“Oh, Zelda—” Hilda began, but Zelda stopped her.

“Please don’t, Hildy,” she said tiredly. “No fussing. Not tonight.”

Hilda bit her bottom lip and obliged, at least for the moment. She’d fuss as much as she pleased; it was only a matter of choosing a moment when Zelda was willing and open to it. This was the dance they’d been learning ever since they were girls.

She bustled into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water, then set it on the hob. She got her favorite mug--dark blue and patterned with constellations--down from its cabinet. She rifled through her stores for herbs—chamomile, nutmeg, cinnamon, lavender, and a pinch of cowslip—and carefully ground first the chamomile, the the rest, up in the mortar. She arranged Zelda’s favorite ginger biscuits on a cheery yellow plate and filled a vase with fresh lilacs she’d cut from the garden earlier that day. She added the water and chamomile to the teapot once the water boiled. She strained the tea into Zelda’s cup, and added the other herbs along with a generous helping of honey. As an afterthought, she poured herself a cup of tea as well; Zelda was more likely to accept care and attention if it didn’t look too much like either of those things.

She put everything on a tray and, satisfied with the tableau she presented, carried it into the parlor. Zelda raised her eyebrows as she noticed the heavy tray. “What’s all this?” she asked.

“Oh, you know,” Hilda said airily, setting the tray on the coffee table and sitting in a particularly squashy armchair, “thought it might be nice to have a bit of pudding.”

“Mmm, yes, I’m sure you did,” Zelda said, with a smile so small that it would be imperceptible to anyone besides Hilda. She blew on the surface of her tea and took a sip, squinting as she tried to identify the different flavors. “Cinnamon, and… nutmeg?”

Hilda nodded, taking a drink of her own. “And lavender, and just the _teensiest_ bit of cowslip,” she said, then smiled. “With extra honey, of course.”

Zelda took another sip of her tea and the room went still for a moment. “I’m not ill,” she said quietly.

“I never said you were, Zelds.”

“How interesting, then, that herbs meant to remedy the symptoms of upper respiratory illness somehow ended up in my evening tea,” Zelda said.

“One of life’s little mysteries,” Hilda said, shrugging.

Zelda opened her mouth, perhaps to reply, but instead smothered a series of violent coughs into the crook of her arm. When the coughing subsided she rubbed at her chest, as though it ached.

Hilda frowned and joined Zelda on the chaise, close but not quite touching her. “You know,” she said, “it would be alright. If you _were_ ill, I mean.”

“I’m not,” Zelda insisted, though it was rather undermined by a sniffle.

“Okay, so you’re not. But it _would_ be alright if you _were_.”

Zelda sneezed three times in a row in response, which was as good an answer as any. Hilda busied herself with rearranging the biscuit plate so that Zelda could blow her nose in relative privacy. Zelda tipped her head back against the cushion and sighed.

“Are you tired, Zelds?” Hilda asked carefully.

Zelda pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers and reluctantly nodded. “I haven’t been sleeping well,” she admitted, “since…” she waved a vague hand, a gesture that—Hilda assumed—referred to their entire lives.

“Yes, well, perhaps that’s why you’re…” Hilda said with an equally vague gesture of her own. Zelda glared, but there was no real heat behind it. “I could whip you up a foxglove tincture if you’d like.”

Zelda picked at her nails. Eventually she jerked her head in a reluctant yes. “That would be nice, I think,” she murmured, eyes set determinedly on a point somewhere across the room.

“I’ll be back in just a blink,” Hilda said, patting Zelda’s shoulder as she passed by. “You sit tight.”

Zelda’s only answer was a heavy sniffle followed by more coughing. She pulled the blanket tighter around her body and closed her eyes.

“Here we are,” Hilda said minutes later, handing Zelda the steaming mug. “Drink up.”

Zelda accepted the mug, cradling it in her hands to savor its warmth. “Sit with me, Hildy?” Zelda said, with a pout that perfectly mirrored Sabrina’s. “Please?”

“Well,” Hilda said, as though she was being very magnanimous, “since you said _please_.”

It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes for the foxglove to take effect. Zelda’s head slipped onto Hilda’s shoulder as her eyes began to droop closed. _The poor lamb was exhausted_ , Hilda thought, running a hand through Zelda’s hair as she watched the movie. Zelda hummed happily at the contact. “I was thinking,” she said, her voice lethargic and slightly slurred, “that you may be right.”

“Right about what, precious?” Hilda asked, surreptitiously checking Zelda’s forehead for fever and finding it blessedly cool.

“Earlier, when you said that I should try to find things that I,” she paused to stifle a yawn in her palm, “that I enjoy doing again. Or…or maybe even consider returning to the Academy. You may be right.”

“Oh, Zelds,” Hilda said, tears pricking at her eyes, “I think that would be wonderful, if you’re ready.”

“I’ve rather forgotten…parts of myself lately,” Zelda said, words that she ordinarily kept locked away seemingly loosened by drowsiness. “They have been… difficult, these months.”

“I know they have, darling,” Hilda said, pressing a kiss to Zelda’s temple and squeezing her hand. “I know.”

“I’m aware,” Zelda said, her voice so soft that Hilda had to strain to hear it, “that I’ve been something of a… of a burden lately—”

“No,” Hilda said, firmly cutting her off, “absolutely not. You, Zelda Phiona Spellman, are many things and some of them are quite maddening, but _never_ that.”

Zelda made a sound that indicated she disagreed, but she did not argue. “I’m falling asleep,” she said instead, her body warm and heavy against Hilda’s arm.

“Then rest, my love,” Hilda said. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

**Author's Note:**

> My personal HC is that in Sabrina's very, very early life, Zelda was actually the one who did most of the caring and nurturing; she's known to be a brilliant midwife, and I can also imagine Zelda finding it very freeing to look after and love a baby because they won't have any memory of it and they don't really have a personality yet. I feel like when Sabrina got to be around four and started to be a whole little person with thoughts and memories and opinions that Zelda started to pull back and leave more things to Hilda.


End file.
